Complexity – General, Limited and Organized: Problem, Methodology and Basic Concepts

This paper will provide an overview of the problem of complexity, highlight the main phenomena and propose concepts that describe it. We shall present the essence of the problem of complexity, which consists in the ambiguity of the relations of the singular and the multiple, the external and the internal, the subject and the object. For this purpose, methodological principles of complexity are emphasized: the distinction between general and limited complexity; critical modeling of complexity relations. Then the signs of complexity are indicated: heterogeneity, exteriority, emergence, evolutionary nature, mimeticity. Complex relationships correspond to those phenomena that are accepted as a fact, but are not fully explained deterministically. It will be shown why, despite the high interest in the problem, a general theory of complexity has not been created and how this is ontologically related to the definition of the problem itself.